


Harry Potter and the Boy out of Time

by DarkandChaotic



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: A different kind of Time Travel, AU, Alternate Universe, F/M, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:53:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21925492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkandChaotic/pseuds/DarkandChaotic
Summary: Harry Potter meets  Tom Riddle in the most unusual of ways.
Relationships: Hermione/Ron, Tom Riddle/Harry Potter, Tom/Harry
Comments: 5
Kudos: 140
Collections: Chamber of Secrets' Winter Exchange (2019)





	Harry Potter and the Boy out of Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hookedonthesky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hookedonthesky/gifts).



The last thing he remembered was tumbling down the grassy hill. And then opening his eyes to a voice. A boy his age.

"Get up."

And get up he did. Partially because it was uncomfortable lying amidst decaying leaves and pointy grass blades. Partially because he was too used to doing what people, the Dursleys in particular, told him to do.

"Who are you? You aren't from the orphanage."

The first time Harry and Tom met, Harry hadn't even known his own name. Always unnatural, always freak, always ...

"Boy! Get back here this instant!"

Harry lost whatever colour his cheeks had and, with only a terrified glance toward the boy across him, quickly ran to his furious uncle.

***  
  


"You again! What are you doing here?" the other boy demanded imperiously.

He was no older than Harry, who was barely old enough to start school, and yet he carried himself with all the authority of a king. He seemed peeved that Harry was there.

"I'm sorry. I'll leave if I am a bother." Harry mumbled quietly, looking down at his hands which were clenching his worn, thin summer shorts tightly. The other boy's stare unnerved him. It was almost like Petunia's when she was angry at him for something but so much more intense.

"I did not tell you to leave. I asked why are you here." The other boy insisted.

"Dudley can't find me here." Harry answered quietly, timidly.

The other boy seemed more impatient and annoyed by his meekness than anything else.

"And who, pray tell, is this Dudley that you cannot handle him on your lonesome?"

" He's my cousin. Auntie and Uncle let him get away with anything and they always pu-" Harry covered his mouth lest he said anything he shouldn't. He didn't want to go without dinner into his cupboard.

The other boy narrowed his eyes.

"And don't your parents care that he is bullying you?" The other boy could care less about Harry's problems. Yet, he still felt annoyed at the prospect of someone just lying down and taking it like there was nothing else to be done.

"My parents are dead."

Oh. And that certainly put light onto the situation – a strange boy with worn out, ill-fitting clothing and unkempt hair. For a moment, the other boy considered the idea that maybe, just maybe, he had it better than Harry. That moment did not last long

***  
  


They call him a freak. Unnatural. Abomination. And a plethora of other things that he did not wish to repeat lest his anger got the better of him. That wasn't important. What was important was that there was finally somebody like him! Different! Powerful.

Quite possibly a friend?

***  
  


The other boy's name was Tom. Tom Marvolo Riddle. Harry didn't know his full name, wouldn't know it for a whole month more when, under Tom's insistence, he himself asked the teacher. And what a fallout that had been.

His name was Harry James Potter.

***  
  


Tom said that Harry was special. Harry would've loved to believe Tom but it was really hard sometimes. Especially when he'd go into his cupboard without dinner. When his back, arms and legs would hurt from where Dudley and his friends would beat him up for the silliest of things. Tom had his own room in the orphanage. Harry almost wanted to go to an orphanage if only to be with Tom.

Tom was his friend, even if Harry thought Tom was downright scary and overly bossy at times. Harry knows that sometimes Tom doesn't mean well. He doesn't like it but he can't help but think of all the times Tom had gone out of his way to help him, even if it was in his own subtle, scary way.

***  
  


Harry's the most clueless person Tom has ever met. Not necessarily dim, but very clueless. Tom had the hunch it was an acquired trait of Harry's, much like his overbearing wallflower tendencies. At least in the orphanage, the matrons taught them basic courtesies. Anything to get an edge into getting adopted. Tom had long learned not to waste his hopes on that.

Harry was living with his family and yet, somehow, the other orphan, the one at the actual orphanage, was by far the better off of the two of them.

***  
  


It didn't take long to figure out that Harry also had a special trick of his own, much akin to his ability to speak to snakes. It all happened while Tom was helping Harry with his school work. Or, more exactly, the first time Harry took up Tom on his offer of help.

Harry was from the year 1987. Tom was not.

***  
  
  


Tom had always had this thirst for knowledge, this dangerous spark in him becoming more prominent when faced with the opportunity to learn something new. When Tom asked Harry to show him where he lived, Harry had simply taken him by the hand.

"It's quite close, really" the green-eyed boy had said, as Tom watched in awe and terror as he took a path that he had never seen before, even though he had gone in that direction before. The sense of wrongness was almost overwhelming and the only anchor he had in all of this was the soft, warm hand of Harry's holding his. Didn't Harry notice any of this!?

Ah, his poor clueless Harry. Somehow, despite the awe and sheer terror at what was happening, despite the fact that every single hair on his body had stood up straight like the fur of a frightened animal, Tom still couldn't help but feel that tiny, desperate fondness that he felt for this strange, meek boy.

Tom found himself landing in what was basically another world. Clean, crisp streets, rows upon rows of perfectly identical and pristine houses with tiny little tidy yards and parked vehicles the likes of which were almost alien to his usually quite on point sensibilities.

Tom had always had this thirst for knowledge. And he always kept the new things he learned to himself. Naturally, he took half a year before he explained to Harry that he could time travel.

Tom still thought talking to snakes was cooler.

***  
  


Tom stared at the man with the red hair and half-moon glasses. He was a wizard. Now he had a name to his power. And he also got a taste of what would happen to those too weak to take it. As he watched his wardrobe burn, a small part of him thought of Harry.

***  
  


Tom, as it turned out, was a year older than Harry. As it also turned out, because he was born after September 1st, he had to wait till he was 12 before going to Hogwarts.

Tom was excited about going to Hogwarts. Then he remembered Harry and his time travelling abilities and he suddenly felt the cold realization that there was a possibility he wouldn't be able to visit Tom during the school year. Tom always got what he wanted. And he wanted for Harry to be capable of visiting him. So, naturally, Tom had Harry practice.

And that's the story of how Harry had Tom and himself brought in by the London Police late one night to wait for Aunt Petunia to pick them up.

Tom did not like Aunt Petunia. Aunt Petunia was even less enthused about him.

"You'd stay away from this freakish boy if I were you." She had said to him about Harry.

It made Tom's blood boil.

"He's the same as me." He had retorted defiantly, staring straight into her eyes, feeling the cold fury seeping out of him.

That hadn't gone well.

At that moment Tom knew he had it better than Harry, despite living in an Orphanage during the bloodiest war the world had known. Even with the exorcisms.

***  
  


Tom decides Harry needs some much-needed self-preservation skills. He could not spend his whole life depending on Tom's foresight and protective urges. Harry'd beg to differ.

Tom teaches Harry how to be sneaky.

Harry is very good at being sneaky.

But terrible at pickpocketing.

***  
  


Harry has terrible eyesight and yet he knows how to lipread. It's something he has picked up from his Aunt Petunia.

Tom's amused.

When Harry lipreads a ridiculous conversation the Matron is having with one of the older orphan girls, Tom outright laughs in delight.

His Harry could be full of the strangest surprises.

***  
  


Harry doesn't show up for a while and Tom is worried. For some reason whatever Harry did to connect their two times, it has left their days and nights more or less synchronized since. Thus the amount of time that goes by with Tom not seeing Harry is the same amount of time Harry spends not being with Tom.

If Harry had a say in it, he'd attach himself to Tom at the hip and, as much as this thought amused Tom, he was still feeling worried over Harry's absence.

Harry returns two weeks later with tales of being swarmed by Owl Post and his Uncle's desperate, failing efforts at keeping him from his Hogwarts letter. Said tales also included a hairy giant of a man with a magical umbrella, Dudley growing a pig's tail and the fact that his parents had both been magic.

And that they had been murdered by a Dark Lord called Voldemort.

"He had tried to kill me too, Hagrid had said. The scar on my forehead is where he, uh, cast the killing curse on me."

It would be months before Tom'd find information on the killing curse and realize people should not, could not survive it. It made his Harry even more special.

***  
  


The first day of school was going to be difficult for both of them. For Harry because of not being with Tom and because his fame made him feel overwhelmed by all of the people trying to shake hands with him or to simply touch him like he was some sort of good luck charm or a holy token. Harry had never done well with crowds of any kinds and it had been so stressful. Then he met Ron and his rat and it was ok. Tom still hadn't been there with him though. He thought about finding him while on the moving train.

It was a crazy idea. Crossing over inside a moving train! But it was worth the try. It was still worth the try even when Tom ripped into him with a scolding worthy of Aunt Petunia herself. Still, Tom's shoulders were set more lightly, as if a great weight was removed from them and Harry felt a little bit more secure now that he had seen his friend.

***  
  


Draco Malfoy is the most ridiculous child he had ever met. Harry was more appaled by his abysmal attempts at getting him to be his...friend? Benefactor? The word would certainly fit, Tom would say, had he been there.

Needless to say, considering Harry had spent years in the company of one Tom Riddle, Draco had managed to not only not impress Harry but to actually leave him disappointed.

Draco was not amused.

Ron, on the other hand, was very amused. They struck a fast friendship.

***  
  


"Dumbledore is Headmaster in my time," Harry said to Tom while holding up a chocolate frog card with Dumbledore's image on it.

It had taken them two days to find each other. Tom's first day had been far less stellar than Harry's. Tom had been sorted into Slytherin.

"I almost got there too, but Malfoy was in there and..."

"And you did the most Slytherin thing and got sorted into Gryffindor instead." Tom chuckled quietly while shaking his head. He then sighed and dropped his smile for a more serious topic. " Dumbledore's dangerous. Avoid him as much as you can."

Harry didn't ask why. One look at Tom's tight fists was all the reason he needed. It was one of the reasons Tom considered Harry his friend. Harry understood and Harry didn't judge. They may disagree on a few things here and there but they respected each other, as much as 11 and 12-year-old boys understood the concept of respect in this particular concept. They were allies. They were friends. But most of all, they were something Tom had never known he needed until he had it. They were equals.

"Dumbledore said we'd die a very painful death if we go into the third-floor corridor on the right-hand side," Harry said quietly, pensively.

What came out of Tom's mouth then was historically considered to be the only occasion in which he and Dumbledore agreed on something, ever.

"Harry, don't go into the third-floor corridor."

***  
  


Ron met Tom by accident. Or, to be more exact, Harry dragged Tom to his midnight duel with Draco.

"He will not show up. From what I understand of his character, he is a coward that hides in his father's shadow."

Ron absolutely loved how Tom then proceeded to rip into every little thing he knew about Draco from Harry. Then Ron noticed Tom's Slytherin themed robes.

Things went rapidly downhill from there.

***  
  


Things went rapidly uphill once Harry had Ron and Tom duke it out through wizarding chess. And don't get Harry wrong. Ron absolutely decimated Tom on the chessboard. A feeling of grudging, mutual respect was born that day on the proverbial battlefield.

***  
  


Harry becomes the youngest Seeker in a century. Ron's ecstatic. Tom has yet to see the appeal of brooms. But he does agree with Ron that Harry's a natural in the sky. One day Tom would join him in the skies without the use of anything other than his own magical power.

***  
  


Harry, Ron and Tom save a girl named Hermione Granger from a Troll. Tom's absolutely exhilarated over the sheer power trip the whole encounter left him with. Up until the moment, Harry unceremoniously shoves him into his own timeline just in the nick of time before being caught by the Professors.

Hermione Granger asks about Tom and how Harry was able to vanish an entire student. Later on, when they meet up with Tom, the Granger girl and said boy hit it off surprisingly well. Ron has a coughing fit that sounds surprisingly like "nerds". Hermione and Tom bond over their love for books and knowledge. She'd later send him a copy of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings for Christmas and his birthday.

***  
  


The "He's a year older." excuse starts to get thinner with each passing month. Ron doesn't really care but Hermione is scary observant, much like Tom is, and she eventually decides to confront Harry about it. Harry eventually says it's time travel. Hermione asks Tom to leave a permanent mark on his side of the timeline. It does not appear on their side.

"Well. You aren't from our timeline, I should think. Either somebody repaired the mark, which I think it's highly improbable, or it simply didn't appear because we are not from the same timelines."

Hermione is scary smart like that.

***  
  


There is a Cerberus on the third-floor corridor. It guards a trap door, or so Hermione says. Tom and Hermione make a scary team. Harry regularly tells himself not to get on their bad side. Well, Tom'd never intentionally hurt him, but he wasn't so sure about Hermione.

They find out that whatever the Cerberus is guarding, a man called Nicholas Flamel was involved. They don't find any information about him. In a desperate bid for more information, they have Tom check his own timeline. Tom, for his part, asks Slughorn about him and Slughorn opens the treasure trove of information and gossip and Tom thinks it's glorious.

***  
  


Harry asks if Tom's ok with spending so much time away from his own peers.

"They're hardly worth mentioning. I maintain an amicable enough relationship with most of them."

What Tom didn't say Harry understood. They were beneath him in someways and yet they acted superior to him all because of their funny notions about blood purity. Tom's presence in Harry's timeline was as much for Tom's sake as it was for Harry's.

***  
  


Harry takes Ron and Hermione to Tom's time. Hogwarts is pretty much exactly the same, save for a few corridors, classrooms and activities that they did not have in their own time. It was more or less a letdown in Ron's opinion. Hermione, on the other hand, abused the different rules for the restricted section of the library. Harry blamed her exploiting tendencies to Tom's influence.

***  
  


Hagrid has a baby dragon. It bites Ron. In the panic and confusion, Harry accidentally sends it to Tom's time. Hagrid's distraught for days. Tom never really found the baby dragon despite looking for it on several occasions. Years later, when Hagrid unleashes the Spider Menace upon the Forbidden Forest, it is the combined forces of the Centaur and their benevolent dragon ally that keeps them at bay. It had been Bane's mother who had found the starving, half-dead baby dragon and nursed it to health.

***  
  


Snape was not after the stone. It had been Quirrel.

Quirrel hurt his friends. Tom's friends.

Yes.

Plural.

When Ron had fallen unconscious after the chess trial, he had been angry. But when Quirrel and that thing sticking out of the back of his head had attacked Harry, he had been beyond livid. He fires spell after spell, a surprising repertoire for someone who was barely thirteen and in his first year of magical education. He pours everything he has just for the sake of protecting his Harry.

He buys Harry time to recover. By some miracle, Harry manages to send him back to his time before Dumbledore gets there. By another, Voldemort spends years utterly convinced he had sired a bastard somewhere down the line that he had never found about.

***  
  


It takes four years for Dumbledore to finally meet Harry's Tom Riddle.

It takes Tom till the end of his second year at Hogwarts to realize that he was in love with his Harry.

It takes Hermione five years to crack the powers behind Harry's amazing ability to connect with Tom's timeline at will.

It takes Ron one year after they finish Hogwarts to propose to Hermione.

Voldemort never really finds out that Harry's Tom isn't his bastard son. Tom, for his part, never disproves the notion either.

It takes Harry no time to say yes when Tom finally asks him the question he'd never known he'd wanted to hear his whole life.


End file.
